Drop

Why this flight from individuality, this fear of being selved? Why this suspicion of the "ego," this hesitation to whisper, "I Am"? When civilization seems too complex and insecure, at the collapse of an empire, we escape into collectivism, seeking solace in the anonymity of the political group, the religious commune. We define ourselves by our race or gender or party, rather than our personhood. It is too frightening to stand forth as an individual self, an independent moral agent.

This collectivism, whether political or spiritual, does not promote our evolution. It simply gives us cover. Yet the plasm in a cocoon yearns to be a butterfly: not a species of butterfly, but this butterfly. Elements of soil gather from detritus of the myriad organic dead, rejoice in the seed, concentrate their ancient urges in a stem, then sing the flower: not a collective flower, but this flower.

No great poem was ever written by committee, no masterpiece ever painted by a general consensus. It is not the collective that inspires us, but the radiantly unique individual. The first sangha gathered, not around the abstraction of Buddhahood, but Gautama, the awakened one. The early church found inspiration, not in the theology of Christ, but in the person and work of Jesus. On the steps of the agora in ancient Athens, the academy did not form around a philosophy, but around a personality: Socrates.

Creative hearts are ignited by the excellent, not the average; the expression of genius, not the general opinion. Only the despairing and defeated drown their personhood in a party, their voices in a meme.

You are here to culminate the evolutionary process in a way that neither the angel nor amoeba can do: to center cosmic intelligence in a human body, and hone the Spirit to a fine-pointed soul. Become Human and Being, both at once, a human being. Find the voice that is yours and no other's, a voice the whole universe recognizes as its own. Only of voices is a chorus made.

To awaken, the ocean must become a drop. The drop wakes up because it embodies the paradox of its opposite. The only thing that liberates is the convergence of opposites. Opposites cannot sleep together. They must awaken from the dream. The drop wakes up the whole sea as it falls back to the depths, an oceanic particular.

Why not be an infinitesimal center with an infinite circumference, liberated by the marriage of antipodes? No need to erase you edges in the One. Embrace Two-ness. You are not here to end contradiction, but to hug it. Then you are the contradiction, and there is no longer a conflict.

Jesus said, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." So are you. When you wake up, you are in the beginning, and at the end, right now. A tiny subnucleur bindhu embracing unbounded space. In the words of the Upanishads, "Ano-raniyan, mahato-mahiyan. Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest. "Tat tvam asi." You are that."

Naked and alone you were born. Naked and alone you will die. Naked and alone you gain liberation. Yet in that moment of enlightenment, you bless billions of souls, infusing the solar joy of your atoms into all that greens, or blossoms, or nets its living cilia under soil. In that satori you invigorate each animal with your feral breath of ecstasy. You make angels jealous.

Why speak of One and many as if they were two? Why this wistful yearning to merge with the generic, the average, the mean? That is the way for doubters and fence-sitters. Be flexible yet firm. Stand up. You are not just milk, you are the nipple.

When you have the courage to be unconditionally 100% alone, you will Christ-all-eyes in a diamond hologram. Distant stars, at the farthest rim of Laniakea, will glisten in the neurons of your hypothalamus. You will comfort the ancestors for ten thousand generations past, and illuminate the faces of the unborn. Your solitude will permeate the cosmos with a fragrance of divine otherness, for you will discover in each creature the perception of your self-delight. O ever-arriving pilgrim of stillness, be the ocean in the drop.



Photo by Dwayne Schnell